Snow Day

Post by J

Today in Washington, D.C., our nation's capital, the federal government closed down and locked its doors tight against a snowstorm. The announcement came around 10:00 last night, due in large part, I think, to the prediction that we were to get - gasp - six to ten inches of that fluffy, marshmallowy, beautifully-serene-if-you-don't-have-to-drive-in-it, snow that kids with impending history tests only dream of.

Oh, yeah.

I grew up in Wyoming. As a kid I loved Snow Days - unexpected free time to laze around in my pajamas, read books, watch soap operas for which I didn't understand the melodramatic plot, eat cereal for lunch and consume a mid-afternoon snack of hot chocolate and toast, and just revel in getting a windfall of time to just do nothing. So important were these rare occurrences that they warranted capitalization.  Snow Day. It was almost like I felt guilty for taking pleasure in doing nothing, but it was a delicious guilty feeling, let me tell you.

As an adult, prior to joining the Foreign Service, I worked in Wyoming for 12+ years. For nine of those twelve years, I drove to a community college in Riverton for work - a distance of 25 miles (just as an aside, it took precisely 25 minutes to drive those 25 miles because, other than antelope, there wasn't much traffic on the road). While the annual average snowfall in any given city in the U.S. is 25 inches, the average in my hometown of Lander is 101. During the last twelve years, I had a Snow Day exactly - drum roll, please - once. And I think that was because it was a heavy spring snow that broke power lines.

The reason for the lack of Snow Days, of course, is that Wyoming and its people know a thing or two about snow. They are the stalwart type who know that if they stop because of snow nothing will get done. Wyoming is full of ranchers who have animals that depend on them; if they don't feed the animals because of a snow storm, the animals starve. Not only is this inhumane, it seriously impacts their investment and their bottom-line. This is a mentality that started with the pioneers over 175 years ago, and anyone in Wyoming will tell you it's hard to buck tradition.

Don't get me wrong. I love Wyoming. I love tradition. I love self-reliance and the idea of a "by-your-bootstraps" kind of society. But, oh, I love a Snow Day, too.

What makes today's Snow Day in Washington, D.C. particularly lovely is the simmering knowledge that once I get to the Dominican Republic, I am guaranteed to get exactly zero Snow Days. Cry me a river, I know. But there's something nostalgic about an unexpected free day, something that reminds me of home, and my childhood, and warmth against the storm. I can't help but love that.

Overnight in D.C. we received a disappointing total of about three inches. Wyomingites would scoff, and justifiably so. But I enjoyed about an hour of cozy laziness looking out the window at the bright blue sky. And then, as an adult, I realized I had obligations to fulfill. What did I do with my free day? Studied Spanish, of course.